The 57th Games
by Camera Monkey
Summary: An account of a previous Hunger Games, following the tributes Cam and Jenny.
1. Chapter 1

**I**

**-Cam-**

Twenty three other tributes. Twelve of them were someone's daughter. Eleven of them someone's son. The odds were, in theory, twenty three to one, though Cam thought them a little shorter than that. Still not exactly in his favour though.

There were a couple Cam had to be careful of. There was the big bastard opposite him who'd been eyeing Cam up since the first day of training. Nicodemus was his name, or something like that. Cam was never any good with names. He was at least six two, and, Cam thought, probably as wide. That would be scary enough, if it weren't for the fact he was fast too. Cam could deal with dumb muscle, he spent most of his life dealing with it back home, but Nic was not _dumb _muscle.

Then there was that girl from District 1. She was not to be trifled with either. Everything about her was sharp, fast, deadly. Cam hoped someone else would deal with her before he needed to.

The timer on the cornucopia was counting down, but the lower it got the more time dilated, opened up. Threatened to swallow Cam whole, lose him in the perpetuity that existed between the numbers two and one.

And then zero.

And Cam leaped from his pedestal and straight for the bounty in the shadow of the cornucopia.

Nic did too, as did the girl from District 1 and a handful of others. Most of them ran for the surrounding woods.

_Smart people, _Cam thought. _But I'm not here to fight smart and die hungry. I'm here to win._

In the stock pile of weapons and equipment were the usual assortment of swords and spears that Cam had seen in other Games, along with bags which probably contained bottles and matches and other survival gear. There was a crossbow there as well, and two smaller ones designed to be used with just one hand, like a pistol. Cam marked one of those for himself, and a thin curved sword he liked the look of.

He saw one girl grab a bag and then make a dash for the forrest.

_She, _Cam thought, _is a victim. _The thought stopped him cold. He never used to divide the world between takers and target, killers and corpses waiting to happen.

Cam had never been a particularly nice person, he'd always had a bit of a ruthless streak, but it had taken the form of the tiny criminal empire he ran back in District 11. Back home Cam was what people called a whipjack. Someone who'd buy stolen goods, and sell them back to the people they'd been stolen from, with a nice percentage for himself, of course. He didn't kid himself that just because he didn't _steal _anything his hands were clean, but everyone has to make a living. He also ran the most crooked book in the whole of Panam. People would bet on anything, and Cam was happy to let them, because he knew how to rig the odds. Have them _ever _in his favour.

_Except for now, _he thought.

He'd been stood still for maybe a second, but it was long enough for the landscape to have changed somewhat. There was a body laid spreadeagled leaking blood into the ever growing pool around him. There was a sword on the ground an inch from his hand, and one through his stomach. To Cam's left there was a kid, no more than fourteen, knelt down, begging for his life. Stood over him was one of the careers. A girl from District 2. Tallish, and lithe. Fast. Would sting like a whip, Cam suspected, if he gave her the chance.

_Best avoided, for now at least. _Then he looked back at the kid. He'd wet himself. The girl drew her arm back for the kill.

"Hey, ugly," Cam called. It was a lie, she was the precise opposite of ugly, but Cam had learnt that the fastest way to get a girl's attention was to insult her vanity. That had been the case with the girls Cam knew anyway. He suspected he didn't know the right kind of girl.

He ran for her so that he arrived just behind his words, but he wasn't fast enough. She turned and saw him coming for her, got her sword in the way so that Cam would do the work for her and impale himself, but Cam had never been one to do what others wanted of him. Cam had built up enough momentum so that stopping would be impossible, but he managed to direct himself slightly to his left, it wasn't much, but it was enough for the sword to just scratch his arm rather than open him up.

Cam collided with the girl from 2 and they went sprawling to the floor. They rolled a few paces before the girl got free of Cam's grasp and just seemed to glide onto her feet without any effort at all. Somehow she still had her sword.

_I'm fucked_, Cam thought as he struggled to get to his feet.

Cam wasn't giving himself enough credit. He'd always been able to look after himself. Working with criminals and peasants who'd recently been cheated out of their limited wealth meant that he often had to defend himself, he'd gotten good at it, plus he'd been honed during training. He wasn't the strongest, or the fastest, but he was enough of both to give him a fighting chance. So his mentor had said anyway.

Logically Cam knew that the fight took three or four seconds at the most, but it stretched out around him in slow motion like the clips his mentor made him watch over and over.

2 aimed a stab high, towards Cam's heart. He slapped the flat side of the blade and sent the stab wide as he took a step forward. He grabbed the wrist of her sword arm and aimed a strike at her elbow to make her drop the sword. It worked, but he had to pivot at the waist to do it which left a lot of Cam for 2 to aim for and she took advantage of it by bringing her knee up and into his kidneys.

_Bendy_, he thought as they took a step apart.

Cam noticed 2's eyes flick behind him for the merest hint of a second, before she turned tail and ran for the trees.

Cam almost wanted to follow her rather than turn and find out who was behind him, but he wasn't leaving the cornucopia empty handed, so he turned.

"Nic," he said.

Nic nodded a greeting, a smirk on his face. He'd claimed the crossbow.

They stood apart for a second. Cam's mind was racing.

_He's slower than me. Slow enough? I don't know. I have to slow him down more if I'm going to grab any weapons. The knees, go for the knees. _

Cam started for Nic, who loosed a shot from his crossbow. It went high and wide. Cam was aiming to run past Nic, rather than into him as he had with 2. He jabbed his elbow into Nic's side on the way past, not hard enough to do much damage, just to slow him down enough to give Cam time to kick Nic in the knee. Cam felt joints crack and tendons stretch as he drove his foot into the back of Nic's right knee. Nic's leg folded and his body followed it down. He collapsed face first into the dirt.

Cam didn't wait to see how long he stayed down, he just dashed for the cornucopia.

The initial bloodbath had fizzled itself out. Most people were gone, or laid on the floor dead or dying. Cam noted with a twinge of sadness the corpse of Jodi, the girl from 11.

No one had taken the sword Cam wanted, but both of the small crossbows had been claimed, so he grabbed the sword and ran for the forest. There was a small green bag in the grip of a girl who'd fallen on her face, a knife embedded in her back.

_She doesn't need it anymore, _Cam thought as he took it and ran for the trees.

He didn't notice that the boy he'd helped hadn't made it out.

**-Jenny-**

Jenny noted with annoyance that the fingers on her right hand still didn't do quite what she wanted quite as quickly as she wanted them to do it. Feeling was returning to her lower arm, but too slowly. And she was pissed off that she'd lost her sword.

_It really would have been best to avoid the guy from 11_,she thought, _oh well, at least I've got the measure of him now_.

She took stock of the equipment she still had. One small knife and a pack that contained just one water bottle, some string, and some dark camo paint.

_Useless_.

She tried making a fist with her right hand, then swore and started walking nowhere in particular. She'd planned to meet up with her partner from 2, but she'd seen him go down moments after it started.

She wondered what had happened to the guy from 11. Bad things, she suspected. Nic was a hard guy. If she could bet she'd put her money on him. Not that it would be productive. She'd either lose or not be around to spend her winnings.

She scanned her surroundings, then sat in the shade of a tree and tried to form a game plan.

Her partner had wanted to go to ground for a day or two and let everyone else tire themselves out, but Jenny hadn't been a fan of that idea. She'd have gone along with it so she wasn't on her own, but now she was anyway she could play things her way. Part of her wanted to think that she hadn't wanted to be on her own so that she had someone around to take the first hit, a safety in numbers thing. But she knew that that wasn't the whole truth. Part of her was just scared out of her mind.

She was trapped in an arena with people who wanted to kill her. And she was scared.

She'd trained for this, grown up knowing it would happen, but it doesn't prepare you for the visceral gut shot that is standing across from someone who wants to see you dead.

She didn't think anything could prepare someone for that.

_No, gotta snap out of it. Can't let the fear eat me or I'll be handing the games to someone else._

She decided to stay close to the cornucopia, try and pick off anyone stupid enough to go back there to scavenge for supplies. Plus she guessed that's where the inevitable alliance would base itself. She wanted to keep an eye on them. The ones that grouped together would be the biggest threat to her.

She tried to make a fist again, the twinge in her arm had gone all together now.

_I'll have to watch out for 11_, she decided, _he'd have had me if the fight had gone on longer_.

**-Cam-**

Cam's kidneys ached. He was pretty certain he'd be pissing blood for a while thanks to 2. Of course, _a while _had taken on a whole new meaning now. If he survived until the end of the first day that would be _a while_.

After a few minutes of running from the cornucopia Cam had slowed down and started walking vaguely east. Or at least he thought it was east. He never was much good at navigation. Soon the forrest thinned out and became a ruined town. Well, it became a pretty convincing _fake _ruined town. It looked like it was modelled off of one of the richer districts, as even half destroyed most of it still looked better than anything Cam knew from home.

The skyline, fragmented as it was, presented two buildings that were much taller than the rest, Cam suppressed his first instinct and made a b-line for the shorter of the two, assuming anyone else wouldn't suppress their first instinct and they would head for the bigger one.

There were two paths up the building, one far easier and more obvious to spot than the other. They led up opposite sides of the building and their paths were pretty well separated from each other. Cam took the easier of the two routes, assuming that anyone intelligent enough to choose the second tallest building would also chose the most difficult route up it.

He found a secluded corner of the skeletal building which had a good view of the approach from the forest but which should also be hidden in shadow as late as it was in the day. He sat down and took stock of his situation.

_Well, there was the fight with 2,_ he thought. He wondered what would have happened had it had chance to play to its conclusion.

_Nothing good. _

In their brief exchange he figured he walked away the loser.

Nic on the other hand he dealt well enough with. He'd got the sword he wanted, and a bag which he hadn't counted on getting. It hadn't been exactly a bad day thus far.

Bad was another term which had suddenly taken on new meaning. Because compared to any day from his old life this one had been awful.

He opened the bag and tipped its contents onto the floor.

A long, heavy jacket fell to the floor with a dull thud, followed by a small folding knife, useful for skinning an animal but not much more. Not that Cam knew how to skin an animal.

_No water bottle, that will be a problem._

He'd have to venture back to the cornucopia for that. Or get lucky and get one from another tribute. Though the precise mechanics of getting one from a tribute were something Cam didn't want to think to much about.

Cam got up and put the jacket on. It was dark, almost black, fell to his thigh and had a hood. It was thick enough to keep him warm at night. He cut the straps off his bag and tied the two longest ones into a belt which he tied around his waist over the coat to stop it flapping about too much when he moved. He slid his sword into the belt so that it sat at the small of his back. He practiced drawing it a few times until he had a smooth motion down.

He settled in for the night and waited for the pictures of the dead to be projected onto the sky.

Seven died the first day.

Both of the tributes from 12, one from 11, one from 9, 7, 5 and 2.

The kid had been from District 9. Cam felt hollow when he saw his image suspended in the night sky.


	2. Chapter 2

**II**

**-Jenny-**

Jenny woke up the following morning and had to fight a wave of panic that had settled over her like mist. She was in darkness. She tried to sit up but hit her head on the ceiling.

And then she remembered.

_Fool. _

She had settled for the night in small cave about sixty paces from the tree line around the cornucopia. She'd gathered up some stones and tried to cover the mouth of the cave but still keep it looking like a natural formation. She'd achieved some small measure of success. Enough at least for her to survive the night.

She took a sip from her water bottle, which she'd filled from a nearby river. She was hungry too, but she had nothing to eat. She could go back to the cornucopia and see if anything was left there, but the idea didn't sit well with her, mostly because she mentally labelled anyone who headed back there as an idiot. She could try her hand at hunting, though she wasn't much good at it. It was where Jensen, the other tribute from 2 had shined, hunting an survival skills. She decided it would be best to take food from someone else. Make an impact on the Games. But to do that she'd have to find someone. She shifted around so that she was facing the mouth of the cave and started moving the stones slowly out of her way, pausing to listen every so often.

_Right, time to claim some spoils for myself._

**-Cam-**

The morning had brought Cam a fresh perspective on his situation, and not a good one. Not only did he lack water, but he lacked food too. He got up, feeling a lot more exposed in the morning light than he had in the evening, and scanned his surroundings. He couldn't see any sign of other tributes, so he started making his way down from his perch. He decided to circle south and approach the cornucopia from another angle, hopefully he'd find a river or something on the way.

As he got down to ground level he saw tracks through the dusty floor. Human footprints. He thought briefly about following the tracks and trying to get the drop on someone, but he didn't want to fight hungry and thirsty. It wouldn't end well for him. He smiled to himself as he saw that the tracks were heading towards the tallest building.

As he headed towards the forrest some part of his brain, a part long buried under years of living in "civilisation" was screaming at him that he was being watched.

_Looks like our friend who left the tracks has woken up_, he thought. In reality it could be anyone, but Cam couldn't see them, and the thought that whoever could see him was a hundred feet in the air was a comforting one.

The trek to the cornucopia was a quiet one. There were two cannon shots, but neither of them the result of Cam's actions. He found a river nearby, with a small cave and an odd looking rock formation, not the kind of thing that appeared in nature. It looked like they'd been piled near the cave entrance. Of course it was hard to tell what was natural, considering the arena was entirely man made, but something about the cave triggered that small part of Cam's brain. He went over to investigate it.

The cave was very small, you couldn't even sit up in it without hitting your head, and it looked like someone had been in there recently. Maybe spent the night there, or something. Whoever had been there had gone, which, Cam thought, was a good idea.

And then he heard someone.

It was a sound that would be easily missed, if it weren't for the silence that followed. Like the animals knew something bad was about to happen and would stay quiet and let it.

Cam drew his sword and adopted a low crouched position, scanned his surroundings. He couldn't see any movement, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. He turned slowly and there, off to his left.

Two people, neither of them doing a particularly good job at being stealthy. Cam was having trouble recalling their names, but he thought that maybe they were from District 4.

There was a coin flipping in his head, as to whether he should leave them alone, or try and take them down; which he figured was quite achievable if he could get the drop on them. With luck they'd both be down before they knew they were being followed. Then he saw one of them take a sip from a bottle, and the mental coin flip was suddenly irrelevant.

Cam was going to have that water one way or another.

**-Jenny-**

_Where there's water there's food. _

Jenny had no logical basis for her conclusion, but the two tributes she was following were as good a bet as any as to getting her hands on some food. Arcardi and Mel, the two from District 4. Jenny remembered them as being throughly unexceptional during training. She was sure she could take them if she could catch them unawares.

And then she noticed someone just appear from the undergrowth like a spectre. He had a sword in his right hand, and his left was balled into a fist. He was about six paces behind them and to their left when he went for them. He crossed the distance in an instant and had his sword buried in Mel's back before either of them knew what was going on.

Credit to Arcardi, when faced with a fight or flight moment, he chose fight. He had one of the small crossbows Jenny had noticed at the cornucopia in a makeshift holster on his thigh. He took a step back from the Spectre and drew the crossbow, but he was much, much too slow. The Spectre grabbed his wrist and aimed a blow at the tribute's elbow. Jenny's arm twinged in memory of the blow, and she suddenly knew who the Spectre was.

Sadly for Arcardi he didn't have the presence of mind that Jenny had had to exploit 11's position, and he stood still, looking almost confused as the crossbow fell from his grip.

11 threw himself forward elbow first into Arcardi's face. Jenny heard quite clearly the sound of Arcardi's nose shattering even as far back as she was. Somehow Arcardi remained upright, so 11 kicked his feet out from under him. Arcardi fell to the ground like a sack of flour.

_So that's what he had in mind for me yesterday. Bastard._

11 picked up the crossbow and started examining it for a moment, before he fell onto all fours and started retching his guts up.

One canon shot sounded.

_Mel. Arcardi must still be alive._

Jenny emerged from her hiding place, knife in hand, well aware that now was her best chance to get rid of 11.

11 took a ragged breath and weakly lifted the crossbow and aimed it at Jenny.

"I wouldn't if I were you," he said. "I quite obviously don't enjoy killing," as if to accentuate his point he gagged again, "but I'll do it, if you don't give me a choice."

11's aim was well off. He was seriously threatening the Oak that Jenny had been hidden behind, but not Jenny herself.

Every muscle in Jenny's body was aching to drive her knife home and get it done, but she stayed rooted to the spot. She wondered if it was a misplaced sense of honour that was keeping 11 alive. Maybe she couldn't bring herself to kill someone who was quite clearly in no position to fight back. But then she remembered the first day, she'd had no qualms about putting that boy down. And then 11 had saved him, for a short while at least.

"How about we split what they had and go our separate ways?" Jenny said.

A cannon shot rang out. They both looked over to Arcardi. He'd stopped breathing.

11 heaved again.

Jenny took a step towards Mel's body.

"Absolutely not," 11 said. "All their stuff comes with me."

Jenny was about to argue when she heard someone shout, "Over here." She turned and saw one of the tributes from District 1.

She looked back to 11, panic in her eyes, and saw the fear cloud his expression.

With visible effort he fought his way to his feet and rolled Arcardi over and started taking the bag from his shoulders. Jenny did the same with Mel, an unspoken truce between the two of them.

Jenny looked back and saw five people running for them. She started running deeper into the forest but 11 grabbed her arm and said, "Follow me." He started running in the opposite direction, which would skim them across the clearing around the cornucopia and into a part of the arena Jenny hadn't seen yet.

She stayed still, frozen, unable to bring herself to follow 11.

He turned and saw her stood there, lost in indecision, then he saw the group behind her. Distressingly close now. "Trust me," he said.

And she did.


End file.
